Jackson Jambalaya

Looks like William "Bilbo" Dilday found himself smack-dab in the middle of another controversy. It's pretty funny watching Bilbo Dilday, Precious Martin, and Greg Brand point fingers at each other. Here is one of his Clarion-Ledger columns from the past. Warning: It contains language some might construe as racist.

Tuesday, August 18, 1998
OPINION

Pride, honor and slavery make the South more violent

Wiilliam H. Dilday Jr. is president and CEO of Kerimax Inc. in Jackson. He is a member of The Clarion-Ledger Reader Editorial Board.

The Week In Review section of the July 26 New York Times contains an article that is both interesting and extremely disturbing: "Southern curse: Why America's murder rate is so high."

The FBI divides the country into four regions; 1996 is the latest year for which figures were available. The South has nine homicides per 10,000 people; the West 7.7; Midwest 6.4; Northeast 5.4. The national average was 7.4.

Of the top 20 states with the highest rates, 12 are in the South. Mississippi was fifth - 11.1 per 10,000.

The article states: "Murder in the United States has been dropping dramatically for years, to the lowest level since the modern crime wave began in the 1960s. But this encouraging decline has masked a fundamental fact: That there is no such thing as an American murder rate. In fact, there are sharp regional differences in homicide, with the South having by far the highest murder rate, almost double that of the Northeast, a divergence that has persisted for as long as records have been kept, starting in the 19th century.

"Experts note, in addition, that much of the disparity in murder rates between the South.and other sections of the country stems from a difference in the character of Southern homicide. In the South, many murders are of a personal and traditional nature: a barroom brawl, a quarrel between acquaintances or a fight between lovers. Elsewhere, homicides usually begin with another crime, like a robbery gone bad, and typically involve strangers."

Why the South murders

The article goes on to try to explain why the South's murder rates are so high:

  *The South was settled by "immigrants referred to today as Scotch-Irish who had a penchant for family feuds, a love of whisky and a warrior ethic that demanded vengeance."

*An ethic of "primal honor." According to Bertram Wyatt-Brown, a professor of history at the University of Florida, "Above all, honor meant reputation. You identified yourself on the basis of what others think of you, so appearances mattered. Honor was reinforced by slavery. Slavery by its nature dishonors one group and contrives to give all honor to another.

*"The cult of honor" was transmuted Into African-American slave society. "Slaves and their emancipated descendants found themselves outside the law in the South, with sheriffs, judges and juries all controlled by whites. For blacks in the South, there was no alternative to settling disputes personally and physically," said professor Roger Lane of Haverford College.

Southern white males kill

Professor Richard Nesbett of the University of Michigan found there was no difference in murder rates between white males in the largest cities in the South and the rest of the country. But in medium-sized cities of 50,000-200,000, Southern white males commit murder at a rate twice that of their counterparts in the rest of the nation. In small cities, 10,000- 50,000, the rate is 3 to 1, and in rural areas, it is 4 to 1. The excess murder in the South, he said, comes from crimes where you could plausibly say an insult has been involved.

Professor Nesbett devised a psychological test, administered to students at the University of Michigan, that appears to demonstrate a Southern sensitivity to insult and disposition to violence.

In the test, a person unexpectedly bumps into a subject as he walks down a corridor, and calls him a jerk.

Out-of-state white male students from the South, even premed students, tend to react with anger and show measurable increases in levels of testosterone and cortisol, hormones that indicate stress.

White Northern males typically respond by laughing the incident off and do not show the same hormonal reactions.